Biography

Martinhas had a fascination for all things in the sky since he was young and developed a particular love of the night sky as a young teenager. He is now the principal engineer at Scintacor Ltd, in the north of Cambridge.

Starting out purely as a visual observer, he progressed to deep sky sketching and telescope-making, building both 222mm and  444mm Dobsonian telescopes. He now concentrates on high-resolution planetary imaging from his back garden in St. Albans, Hertfordshire, with his scopes mounted on his home-built equatorial platform. 

Martin regularly speaks about planetary imaging and also writes for Sky at Night Magazine. He has been shortlisted in the Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition for the last 8 years, primarily in the Planets section and has been a category winner twice – in the ‘Planets, Comets and Asteroids’ category in 2018 and the ‘Our Moon’ category in 2022. 

He is treasurer of the West of London Astronomical Society (WOLAS) and an equipment advisor in the BAA’s Equipment and Techniques section.

Synopsis

The talk will start with a quick overview of the current best method of planetary imaging – using a high speed digital video camera at the eyepiece end of the telescope to gather thousands of frames of data. This data is then processed with specialised free software to give amazingly detailed views of our near-neighbours in space. 

The principles of digital video imaging will be discussed along with factors affecting the resolution and how to optimise the imaging set-up. Mention will be made of the benefits of stacking, which magnification to use, what gain and exposure settings are best, and the benefits of accessories such as atmospheric dispersion correctors. 

The aim of this talk is to give an idea of what the current ‘state of the art’ is in modern planetary imaging. The talk will be extensively illustrated with Martin’s own images and videos, all taken from his back garden in St. Albans.